Is 'landscape writer' a thing? Kim Stanley Robinson makes it his thing, and in this book he takes us to Antarctica, continent of ice and rock, the last great wilderness, a beautiful and deadly place.

I've been there, just as a tourist during one of the nicest summers on record, but KSR nails the ineffable qualities of the place and the strangeness of light and distance. Robinson spent a season in Antarctica with the NSF's Artists and Writer's Program, and it was time well spent on all sides. By far my favorite character was Ta Shu, a feng shui geomancer and artistic resident streaming the landscape back to an audience of millions with a running commentary on its five-dimensional harmony and nano-poems. Ta Shu feels both entirely authentic and very alien.

blue sky
white snow

There are more mundane people as well, and the A plot concerns the future of the Antarctica and the Earth, as scientists wrestle with evidence for the last warm period, support staff grumble under the feudal structure of science, oil exploration teams prepare to extract natural resources, 'native Antarcticans' try to stay below the radar, and ecological saboteurs plan a massive attack in the name of the planet. There's a sorta a love triangle between X, a blue collar General Field Assistant, Val, an elite expedition guide, and Wade, senator's aide, but the characters, while round and unique, feel somewhat muted compared to the landscape and the simply trials of getting anywhere alive on the continent. The only true shared culture of Antarctica; the early expeditions of Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen, come through again and again, along with the disagreements between different political factions. Though this is science fiction, the issues that Robinson explores are still very much alive.